Thursday, April 10, 2008

The log cabin square project is moving right along. I'm up to 8 white squares and 7 red squares. I'm in the middle of square #16 now. There is going to be a ton of seaming on this one, but I'm weird--I actually like mattress stitch. I probably need my head examined.

The crocheted baby blanket is taking a while longer than I expected. When I was outside on Sunday, I noticed that the third skein I had used was a noticeably different dyelot than the other 4 that were in the blanket at that point. The DCA said not to worry about it because a baby won't care if it's different. I just put myself in the new mom's shoes--I would definitely have noticed, and I would have wondered why someone didn't care enough to match the yarn. Yes, on top of being insane (see above), I'm obsessive compulsive. I ripped it back to the end of the second skein, and I have just now gotten to skein #4. The finished blanket is supposed to be as close to 36" x 36" as possible so I have a ways to go.

I started sock #2 in the Summer of Love pair too. When I finished the socks for the DCA before Easter, I ran out of yarn just as I reached the second toe. I dug out some other grey yarn to finish the pair because he said he doesn't mind the mismatched toes. (I haven't woven in the ends yet, because I totally mind the mismatched toes. I'm still debating ripping out the first toe and doing it in the second grey yarn, so the socks match exactly. Sigh.) Since I ran out of yarn then, I'm starting to panic that I'm going to run out of yarn again on this pair. I should just hunker down with them for a few hours, crank out several inches, and realize that I'll be fine because it's Socks That Rock. I have to finish today's square first though.

I finally started putting some stuff up over at Ravelry--it's just my current WIPs. My username over there is hoyagirl. It's going to be a while before I get anything much posted because it's so time-consuming. I can see why so many people are abandoning their blogs in favor of the site. It really can be addictive! While I was there yesterday, I signed up for the pair-a-month sock challenge started by Kaity and her mom. I just couldn't resist, because I thought it would help me play catch-up with all the sock club yarn I have around here. Guess we'll have to wait and see! Come join the group too if you're looking for a little motivation.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

...we are settling in here on the right coast. It is SOOOOO good to be back home in VA. I'm in awe and wonder every time I get in the car and drive around our "new" town. I love the trees, the houses, the fences, the four-lane roads, convenient take-out, everything. Sigh...being home is such a good feeling! Now, if I only had a job!

I'm working on that part, kind of. I have registered for the teaching exams I need to take in order to get my teaching license here via reciprocity. I really think the whole licensing thing is a big racket--if you're licensed in one state, it should transfer automatically to another! It seems like such a scam to have to take a totally different set of much easier exams for one state when you've already passed--with flying colors--the much tougher exam for a different state. Someone is getting some big money off of this somehow. Hiring is a small problem too because the local schools are only working on transfers among the current employees at the moment. Once all that is settled, they'll post any remaing jobs for the new year. It means the potential new hires get all the leftovers. I'm not going to worry about it until later--I'm taking the exams for middle school math and science on top of my elementary license so as an experienced teacher I'm sure I'll be of interest to somebody in the district.

I thought by staying home temporarily I'd have tons of knitting time, but it really hasn't turned out as I imagined. I finished a pair of socks for the DCA, and now I'm slogging my way through a variation on last August's Socks that Rocks shipment. I'm so behind on that front! I also ripped out all the aran squares for the DCA's afghan, and now I've turned them into log cabin squares that will have to be seamed together later. I'm much happier with the results so far. My goal is to do one square per day until I've used up all the crimson and cream yarn or until I have enough squares to make something vaguely square or rectangular. I did finish two baby blankets for my mom to take to a shared baby shower for the refugee women who attend her church--they need to be dropped in the mail along with the needles I borrowed to do the blankets. I'm in the middle of a crocheted blanket for NMCRS too. I don't know why, but crocheting seems to be better for the type of yarn I received to do the project. I also have a daily goal of one skein per day on that. My reward for the one square plus the one skein is getting to work on the socks in progress.

Every day when I come in here, I always think about how I need to write a blog post to keep it up to date about what I've been doing, and every day when I come in here, I put it off until later. Maybe I need to add daily (weekly?) blog posting to my sock rewards list...